Know Your Mulch

It has been an unusually busy spring, with multiple last minute trips to Seattle, above average rain fall, and above average weeds.

We mulched our garlic with oat straw to keep the weeds down, and it worked really well.  We hardly have any weeds growing in our garlic field.  We do however have tons of oats growing in our garlic field.  In some places the oats are so thick you can hardly see the garlic.  It's sickening to look at.  Lesson learned, buy cleaner straw mulch.  Actually, I'm thinking we may go with leaf mulch next time or if we continue growing garlic and get a new bedder, getting a plastic mulch attachment.  I know I've been against laying down plastic to keep weeds out, but this season might just put me over the edge.

We got our new garden beds built and planted.  It took 51 landscaping ties per bed.  The long sides are easy, three 8 footers with every other row starting with 4 footers to offset the seams.  The short sides however took pieces that were 52 inches long in order to get the 4 feet of space in the middle.  The corners overlap and I drilled through with a 2 foot long 1/2 inch arbor bit, then drove a 2 foot piece of rebar through the corner to hold them together.

There are 3 cross pieces you can see in the picture below to hold the sides from bowing out.  I also drilled through this part and drove a piece of rebar to hold them together.  With 192 cubic feet of soil inside these beds, the cross members are necessary to keep them from falling over with the pressure.

The spacing between the boxes is 5 feet, enough to fit our lawn mower.  The beds are 2 feet high and weeding is SO much easier now.  I think we actually weed more because we don't have to kneel and bend over to do it.

We wound up with extra space this year because of the lack of hot peppers that sprouted, not planting onions, and not planting corn.  So we decided to put in 2x the number of carrots, 32 sq ft or 512 plants.  And we decided to try something new, growing watermelon.  I'm excited to eat our own watermelon, and judging by how well our past crops have all done, we will likely have enough to make some watermelon wine.

We didn't plant the 1/2 acre of corn like we talked about and we didn't put in a pumpkin patch.  We really just ran out of time.  Between me traveling, remodeling our house, and raining 4 out of 5 days, we barely got our garden in.  But therein lies the beauty of doing things yourself, no corn but we have a new bathroom; no pumpkin patch, but we have new raised beds.  And those ideas of corn, corn mazes, pumpkins, fall pig roasts, etc. can all be put up for the next season.

Evening looking across our field

Spring Beginnings

It's been a busy week on our homestead.  With the warmer temperatures and lots of rain, our garlic really popped up. 

Garlic growing

We were really excited to see the garlic coming up through the straw mulch we put down.  And now we just can't wait to see how well it does at keeping the weeds down.  Because we plant in raised beds, we put the straw down really thick in between the beds and about 1 inch thick on top of the beds.  Next year, we want to mulch in the fall instead of the spring.

Today we got our new egg laying chickens, 8 red sex links.  We can't wait to have fresh, organic eggs again.  Since our chickens stopped laying in December, we've probably eaten 3-4 dozen eggs total in 4 months, compared to 2-3 dozen a week. 

New chickens

Now on to the chores and to-do list.  Fences to take down, fences to put up, new electricity in the barn, new raised garden beds, and the list goes on and on.

Farm Income

We did it, we finally made some income from our farming enterprise.  With all of our garlic cleaned and weighed, we wound up with 67 pounds to sell, about 1/4 of what I thought we would have.  It is all sold and we will get our first check this week.  And even though its not much, it did pay for the garlic we purchased last year to get started.  We are excited.  After 2 1/2 years of planning, purchases, and prep, we finally have money going into our account.

Garlic ready for delivery

Next year, even if we still end up with a 4x yield, we will make enough to break even with the tractor payment. Anything above a 4x yield would be actual profit.  And with the changes we are making, I'm confident we'll be closer to 6-7x yield. 

When we set out, our goal was to sell the majority of our garlic to a seed company in the Midwest, but we have to get a higher percentage of our garlic heads bigger than 2 inches.  So now that we've found some garlic festivals within reasonable distance, our goal next year is to sell 300 pounds at one or two festivals, while continuing to improve our fields and select the biggest & best heads to increase our average size.

It's taken 2.5 years to get any revenue, hopefully 1 more year and we will be profitable.  Time to review and update our farm plan for the next 1-3 years.

Garlic Yield

I had counted on a yield of close to 10x when I started this venture last spring.  After harvesting all of our garlic, our average yield for year 1 was 4x.  Since we are planning on planting 25 pounds of each variety ourselves, we were left with only 30-40 pounds to sell.  So, we wound up making enough to make one tractor payment and replace the fluids in the tractor, but was so far off the mark, that it is really depressing.

1/2 the garlic hung to dry

After a few days, much thought, and discussing it with the family, I've come to the conclusion that this is just like any other business.  There are start-up costs, learning curves, and you can't be successful right out of the gate.  So, things are in motion for year 2.  We have a bigger plot, with better soil that is growing the second round of buckwheat right now.  We have 100 pounds of quality garlic to plant.  We have found several avenues to sell our garlic next year.  And we are excited to try some new things.

We will definitely be mulching the garlic for weed control.  We will attempt to use a potato plow to harvest the garlic much faster.  We will try washing the garlic with water before hanging to cut down on the time it takes to clean the garlic for sale.  Hopefully we can get our yield up, harvest faster, clean faster, and make a profit next year.  I need to figure out a faster way to bunch/hang the garlic, but I have 10 months to figure that out.

Some other things that we will be doing next year is growing a pumpkin patch for friends and family.  We want to have a fall gathering, take everyone on a hayride around the country roads, and send all the kids home with pumpkins to carve.  We are also in the planning stages of growing a large plot of corn. We haven't decided if we will grow field corn to feed our chickens or sweet corn to feed our families.  And we are looking into growing pigs instead of meat chickens in the spring.

Needless to say, there will be plenty of activity next year.  Now we start shifting gears and thinking about firewood again.

Bushels of Scapes

After playing 6 games of baseball in a tournament, my son still had the energy to help me pick the scapes this evening.  Almost 4 full half-bushel baskets.  We'll be busy making pesto the next couple of days and hopefully sell a few.  Time to find a farmer's market!

Garlic Scapes Pesto

9-10 garlic scapes, knobby seed-pod removed
1/2 cup slivered almonds
3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
Salt and Pepper to taste

Rinse scapes in cold water
Chop into 1/2 inch pieces
Pour scapes and slivered almonds into food processor
Blend 30 seconds, or until texture is smooth
Scrape sides of bowl.
With the processor running SLOWLY add olive oil and process until thoroughly mixed (about 15 seconds).
To chill place pesto in a glass bowl and cover tightly with plastic wrap


Yields about 2 cups

Weeds and Scapes

The weedeater worked decent in between the rows.  We finally got everything weeded, just in time for the scapes to come on.

Kids running in the weeded garlic field

Andromeda helping with the weeds

We are working on a price for the scapes.  Since they are really a by-product of growing hardneck garlic, I'm not looking to make much off of them.  I might have my wife call a couple of upscale restaurants and see if she can unload them in mass.

Garlic Progress

I am extremely satisfied with how well our garlic is growing, considering this is the first year growing a mass amount and not in 4x4 raised boxes.  That said, we messed up by not mulching the garlic in the spring before the weeds started growing.  So now we have a large task of weeding ahead of us.  Since the garlic is planted in raised beds, we are going to try weeding the beds and in between taking a weed-eater through at ground level.

We are on track to weed 1 row per day in the evenings when it's not too hot.  Hopefully we'll only have to weed 1 more time by harvest.

Below are before and after pictures.  You can see the first three beds on the left are weeded down the slopes and there is still a large mass of weeds in-between the beds.  Since our field for next year is twice the size, it will be imperative that we mulch in the early spring to get on top of the weeds.

Before

After

Changing of the Seasons

Fall is here!!!  The temperatures are dropping into the 30's tonight, the oil furnace is kicking on, and the baby has an electric heater in her room.  10 days ago it was 90 degrees and tomorrow it will be in the high 70s.  Fall brings about many changes, changes in the weather, the leaves change color, the winds change direction.  This year it brought about an unexpected change for us, my contract was pulled at Microsoft.  Fortunately I have found a full time position with a decent commute and will start my new job in 2 weeks.

Tonight we had a frost advisory.  Since this wasn't the best season for peppers anyway, I decided to pick all of our ripe sweet peppers and all of the super hots.  Even though the super hots are still green instead of their usual orange or red, they are still very hot.  However, they are not as hot as they should be.  With this batch of peppers, I will combine the super hots with the habaneros.  The pungency is about the same between the ripe habaneros and the immature reapers & scorpions.

Processing our peppers is a labor of love.  I start by slicing the stem off and cutting the peppers in half.  For this step I wear 2 pair of nitrile gloves to keep the capsaicin off of my hands, ESPECIALLY with the super hots (ghost, reapers, and scorpions).  Once sliced, I place them on the dehydrator trays.  For a dehydrator, we have a simple unit that takes up to 10 round trays.  It will dehydrate 10 trays of super hots in 10-12 hours.

Finished tray of hot peppers

Once they are dried, I crush them with a marble mortar and pestle.  Before I begin crushing, I will put on a pair of nitrile gloves and a respirator mask.  Once the peppers are crushed, I put them in a pint sized mason jar for long term storage.

Mortar and Pestle

Dried peppers ready to be crushed

Finished product

Long term storage

Buying Bulk Garlic

I've been trying to find suppliers to buy bulk garlic.  I never thought it would be so hard to order 600 pounds of garlic (125 pounds of 5 different varieties).  So far, every supplier I've contacted already has their bulbs reserved.  The sad part is I actually scaled down from 1 acre of planting to 1/2 acre in hopes of being able to procure enough to be able to sell some and keep enough to plant 1 acre next year.

My plan for the garlic crop is to plant 25 rows 220 feet long, which comes out to approximately 1/2 acre.  Each row is actually a 12 inch wide raised bed that I will plant 2 rows of garlic in, spaced 8 inches apart.  The garlic will be spaced 4 inches apart in each row.  That will give me 1320 plants per bed, for a total of 33,000 heads of garlic.  This would give me approximately 4,000 pounds of garlic for next year, allowing me to sell 3,000 pounds and keep 1,000 pounds to plant.

Now I just have to hope to find a supplier to make this a reality.

Full-time Farming

I've been thinking about it on and off for months, but recently I can't stop thinking about full-time farming.  I'm not really interested in animals, at least not with my regular full time job, but would really like to grow vegetables.  Actually, not vegetables, just one vegetable, garlic.  After doing a lot of research into costs, yields, market prices, and markets, I think in this area I can expect a net income of $4/pound with a yield of 7000 - 10,000 pounds per acre.  The cost for the seed for 1 acre is around $2500 - $5000.  After adding in the cost of diesel, a used set of disc harrows, and hay for mulch, my expected profit is around $23,000 - $32,500/acre.  There are other costs yet to figure in, like transportation to/from the farm, etc., but there is still a lot of profit to be made.

I'm looking at 7 acres of land about 20 miles from here.  The goal would be to work up to 2 acre plots of garlic with a 2 year rotation before planting any one field again and planting nitrogen rich cover crops in the off years.  With a potential profit of $50,000 - $60,000 a year from 2 acres, I could soon be down the path of becoming a full-time farmer.  I would also like to put in some berry plants to add some additional income or even put some of the profits into a small orchard.

The beef farmer down the road sells to a couple of large restaurants in Pittsburgh, so I am going to talk with him about potentially getting my garlic into the same restaurants and thus cutting each of our shipping costs since we could ship in the same truck.  Besides selling to restaurants, we would sell at a couple of the farmers markets in the area and since our homestead is along a highway, we would put up a sign and sell out of the barn.

I am working on the business plan and financial breakdown for the first 3 years of operation.  If it all works out and I can grow garlic while still working my regular job for another couple of years, we could have our house + farm paid off in 2 years.  Then there is no reason not to be a full time farmer.